Hondo defamation suit settled

Updated 2:03 pm, Monday, January 28, 2013

Photo: Zeke MacCormack, San Antonio Express-News

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Former Hondo City Councilman Clyde Haak shows off an enlargement of the $65,000 check he received Thursday as settlement of a defamation lawsuit he filed against Hondo Councilwoman Ann-Michelle Long and three other people involved in running a 2011 newspaper ad that Haak says made false claims about him.

Former Hondo City Councilman Clyde Haak shows off an enlargement of the $65,000 check he received Thursday as settlement of a defamation lawsuit he filed against Hondo Councilwoman Ann-Michelle Long and three

HONDO — Although former City Councilman Clyde Haak never proved who funded the 2011 newspaper ad that prompted his defamation lawsuit, there's no question who's paying for it now.

Haak received $65,000 to settle the suit against City Councilwoman Ann-Michelle Long, former chamber of commerce executive director Wade Smith and two local men.

He was practically giddy Thursday while showing off an enlarged copy of the settlement check, even while insisting, “This suit was never about the money.”

Haak cast it as one man's fight against repressive political tactics used by a clique of City Hall insiders.

“It was just time for someone to stand up,” said Haak, 78, who was elected to the council in 2009 on a “community unity” platform and served until last May.

Under the no-fault settlement, he agreed not to pursue claims that the defendants violated state election law by falsely identifying the sponsors of the ad, or his accusation that Smith had engaged in “spoofing” with an email distributed under Haak's name.

The ad ran in the Hondo Anvil Herald two days before a May 14, 2011 bond election that included a $10 million bond proposition to fund new Medina County offices.

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Haak was renting office space to the county near the courthouse and the ad, urging support of the bond, stated, “Clyde Haak opposes building more county offices because of the thousands of dollars he makes in rent off Medina County tenants.”

Voters turned down the bond proposal. Haak, an attorney who has practiced here for four decades, said he had never taken a public stand on the bond proposal and believed his reputation was damaged. He filed suit in Travis County against the newspaper and the two men listed on the ad as paying for it, Rothe J. Carle and William Cogburn.

Defense attorney Jim George asserted that the ad was protected political speech about a public official on a matter of community concern, the content of which his clients, Carle and Cogburn, believed to be true.

At a hearing last June George said Cogburn and Carle “deduced” that Haak opposed the bond plan since he'd lose rental income if it passed, but conceded, “There is no direct evidence.”

State District Judge Lora J. Livingston, clearly unimpressed, said, “You say, 'deduce.' I say, 'make up,' because, to me, they are not real different when you don't have any information and you haven't checked it out.”

Haak dropped the paper as a defendant and added Long and Smith — with whom he'd often clashed on city issues — after learning they'd composed the ad. Explaining why Smith recruited Carle and Cogburn to sponsor the ad, Long said in a deposition last fall, “I felt that if my name would have been placed on that, the citizens just would have viewed it as just another disagreement between Mr. Haak and I.”

Smith, who stepped down last year as chamber boss, said in an affidavit that the ad was intended to negate “Clyde Haak's considerable influence against” the bond plan, “by letting people know the little known fact that Mr. Haak would likely benefit financially” if it failed.

“I still believe it to be true,” said Smith, who used the chamber's email account for ad-related correspondence. “I do not understand how or believe that this ad in any way defamed Mr. Haak.”

The parties settled in November after the defense failed to get the case dismissed as protected free speech under the Texas Citizens Participation Act. That 2011 law was designed to counter so-called SLAPP suits, the “strategic lawsuits against public participation” that some corporations have used to stifle critics.

Haak was a public official and would have needed to prove the defendants had actual malice and published false and injurious information either knowingly or with reckless disregard for the truth. If he lost, Haak risked being ordered to pay the defendants' legal fees, estimated at $80,000.

“I always knew I was right,” he said Friday. “They have the right to free speech, as long as it's true. They don't have the right to go out and publish a lie about someone.”

No one admitted to paying the $75 tab for the ad, and the paper's cash receipt held no name, leaving that issue a mystery.

Haak received $41,000 from Smith's insurer, and $8,000 each from Long, Carle and Cogburn under the settlement, which also required each defendant also pay $1,000 toward mediation costs.

Smith, Long, Cogburn and a spokesman for the Anvil could not be reached for comment. Carle called the settlement “a business decision,” adding, “It was not an admission of guilt.”

Haak, meanwhile, is savoring his big check, trying not to gloat.

"I don't want to treat this as a trophy, but there is a great deal of satisfaction."